George Clooney clone, Messiah, Richard Nixon or flim-flam artist, “Mark Carney circus” is welcomed to London by the British media

(FILES) In a file picture taken on January 26, 2013 Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, attends a session of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (WEF) at the Swiss resort of Davos. Incoming Bank of England governor Mark Carney said on February 7, 2013 the bank needed to prepare for a smooth withdrawal of quantitative easing stimulus, in comments made ahead of a BoE interest rate announcement. AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELEJOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images

LONDON — Canadian banker Mark Carney is a Messiah, come to save the British economy and presumably Britain itself. At least that’s how Jeremy Warner put it in the Friday editions of the London Daily Telegraph.

Columnists at other national dailies opined that the “silver-haired” 47-year-old governor-designate of the Bank of England had arrived at Thursday’s televised get-to-know-you session of parliament’s Treasury select committee looking like George Clooney — or Richard Nixon.

It is true that Carney will officially become the big stick at the Bank of England on Canada Day, that he was born in the Northwest Territories and is a great fan of the Edmonton Oilers. But perhaps stretching the Canadian connection a little too far, the man from the Daily Mail, Quentin Letts, declared that it was as if Carney had arrived at an annex across the street from Westminster wearing snow goggles to fend off the glare.

“In answers he was cautious, managerial, calm, very — well, Canadian. He is the sort of man who will study the menu at McDonald’s as if it were the bill of fare at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand,” Letts went on in the finest florid traditions of Fleet Street.

In one of five articles about Carney’s performance in Friday’s Independent, the newspaper said Carney’s official takeover might still be nearly five months off, but anticipation had already reached “a fever pitch” and that “an absurd impression” had taken hold “that he has easy answers to Britain’s economic problems.”

British journalists, like the MPs on the Treasury committee and banking executives in the City of London, were agog at what was hailed by many as a masterful three hour and forty minute jig. The Guardian called it the “Mark Carney circus” before concluding that the soon-to-be former head of Canada’s central bank had been “slick and cerebral.”

Perhaps the most over the top was Michael Deacon, who wrote one of three pieces for the Telegraph and described the Harvard and Oxford-educated Canadian as having “a rugged pensiveness and playful twinkle,” adding that his voice was so “slow, deep, paternally authoritative” that the Treasury committee chairman, Andrew Tyrie, was “lost in Dr. Carney’s gaze.”

But there were Doubting Thomases. The Financial Times and the Times both had somewhat exaggerated articles this week predicting that the economic miracle wrought in Canada was about to go south. The Times suggested that idyllic photographs of Ottawans skating on the Rideau Canal obscured cracks now showing in the ice, just as there were cracks in the Canadian economy. The Financial Times ran busy charts showing how Canada was facing a serious real estate bubble that could tarnish Carney’s reputation.

Given the current, widespread public anger at bankers of every kind following financial scandals that have sometimes involved massive malfeasance, there was this lovely comment on one newspaper website. “Definition: CARNEY (noun) — A carnival worker, flim-flam artist.”

The question of whether the colonial outsider’s pay package of nearly $1.3 million was too much money for someone brought in to sort out Britain’s economic mess at a time when it is being contaminated by Europe’s even greater economic mess was deftly cast aside by the Independent’s Mark Leftly.

“So what’s Mr. Carney supposed to say?” Leftly asked. “‘Actually, I understand that the British people are struggling: in exchange for leaving a country that I’ve steered through these horrific economic times , where I am revered as a saviour, and tipped for top political office, I’ll come over and help rescue you guys at much less than you think I am worth.”

Most of the rest of the mountain of newsprint that was devoted to Carney’s brief public turn in a committee room by the Thames was full of the numbing financial minutia that has long been his bread and butter and the financial jargon that has long been his lexicon.

The newcomer’s thoughts about whether he favoured stimulus over restraint, continuing to fix inflation targets, prosecuting cheating bankers and making the Bank of England’s dealing more transparent were parsed, dissected and elaborated on at length.

The consensus was that his answers were a cautious yes, a let’s talk about it yes and a yes.

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(FILES) In a file picture taken on January 26, 2013 Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, attends a session of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (WEF) at the Swiss resort of Davos. Incoming Bank of England governor Mark Carney said on February 7, 2013 the bank needed to prepare for a smooth withdrawal of quantitative easing stimulus, in comments made ahead of a BoE interest rate announcement. AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELEJOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images

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